Stormy Peak wrote: ↑5 months ago
Most of my mares are from the Foremost line...but I'm even getting hit using mares that have nothing of that line in them. This is my Freak Peak yearling who has no Foremost blood in him.
Hill Street Blues
Wolfman Jack, my SC 2 year old turf route winner and out of a 'Foremost line mare' That mare foaled my only stakes router in this yearling crop that escaped the peaked thing. She had a stakes progressive.
Wolfman Jack was a yearling Freak Progressive - then on wk 11 his of his 2 year old season, he peaked - and week 16 he won that SC race.
His 3 year old season was good, but again, for longer races I had to run him against older horses earlier than I wanted to. In the few longer races I could find for 3 year olds, he did well...not so much against the older horses though.
By the time he ran as a 4 year old he was pretty much done.
I'm just weirded out that mares I've used for a long time are now getting so many peaked with upper tier foals. I'm trying out various stallions and even outside mares from that bloodline and can't seem to escape the Peaked thing.
It's just massively disappointing for me...I want horses that will last until they can run and compete in (those longer races and the big races that are for 4 and up. It's just been a tough 3 or 4 seasons. I just had high hopes this year that I was done with the bad luck. I can only hope that John Wick doesn't peak as a 2 year old.
Stormy
This made me curious, so I thought I would post my actual results. I bred 122 flat TBs for my own barn:
1 Freak .82% but at least he's a LB
7 Stakes 5.74%
35 Allow 28.69%
47 Prod 38.52%
18 Solid 14.75%
14 Claimer 11.48%
60.66% LB across this crop
31.15% Progressive, so a total of 91.8% improvers
8.2% Peak
My training barn tends to look like this, with everything needing time to develop. I don't know what I do differently. Some of it may be my barn sire, as DP only got one peak out of 24 foals. His babies like longer distances and seem to take longer to be at their best, and then most of them have the shed comment, just to keep me hanging on lol.